Conduct Customer Journey Research yourself or outsource? 4 advantages side by side

For that, thorough research is important. A customer journey research, for example. But conducting research yourself costs a lot of time and outsourcing costs a lot of money. Blauw would like to help you make a choice and has compiled a list of advantages of conducting your own research and outsourcing research for you.

Of course, as a market research firm, we hope you will outsource all your CX research to us. But as experts, we understand that this is far from always realistic. At Blauw, we therefore think it's more important that organizations are actively engaged in optimizing the customer experience in whatever way they can. To find out whether it is best for your organization to conduct a customer journey research itself or outsource it to an external party, we list the advantages of both situations for you.

What exactly do we mean by conducting a study ourselves or outsourcing it to an outside party?

Inhouse approach

Conducting a research project yourself is also known as an in-house approach. This means that employees of your own organization carry out the entire research process themselves, without or with very limited outside help and expertise. These employees can be in-house researchers with the necessary expertise, but also members of the marketing team, customer experience team or design team who temporarily take on this role.

Outsourced research

Outsourcing a study means that the study is conducted entirely by an outside party. This external party is, for example, a market research firm. The external party is responsible for the entire process, but involves your organization in important decisions.

Inhouse approach versus outsourcing customer journey research

1. No budget needed versus saving time

No budget? Or haven't received approval at all from the organization to conduct a customer journey research? That's no problem at all if you conduct the research yourself. In a low-threshold way, you can start the research by collecting information that is already available. Think: data from customer service, employees who have direct customer contact, customer satisfaction studies, google analytics or website feedback forms. All this information undoubtedly identifies the initial pain points of the customer journey, and provides leads for further research. In this way, you not only better understand the customer experience, you also convince colleagues of the added value of a customer journey study. Perhaps more time and budget will then be freed up to take a bigger approach to research.

Do you have budget available but little time? Because you need to accomplish your regular work in addition to this research? Then outsourcing the research might be a good idea. For a customer journey research you have to distribute many tasks, arrange a lot and recruit participants, this simply takes a lot of time. The advantage of outsourcing is that it relieves your organization of a lot of work. For an external party that specializes in this type of research, it is not 'extra' work. It is their expertise, so they will more easily make a realistic planning and will not easily be distracted from the research project. In this way, you can concentrate on your specialties and the external party on his.

2. Practical tools versus specialized expertise

Do you want to be absolutely sure that the customer journey research is done excellently? Then it is better to leave the research to experts who have specialized in this field. They have assigned themselves the duty of being the best in their field. A research firm employs several people, each of whom brings the necessary knowledge and experience to your challenge. How much more do you need to improve your organization's customer experience?

On the other hand, these days you can find a lot of software, templates and other tools online that will help you conduct a customer journey study yourself. For each tool you can easily find a detailed explanation on how to apply it correctly. Do you really need an external researcher - and his tools - if in theory they are already available to you?

3. Direct interpretation of objectives versus independent view

Who knows the goals of the organization better than yourself or all the employees? No one, right? The third advantage of doing the research yourself is that you know best what answers you are looking for. You probably know which questions to ask in the survey. Moreover, with the company objectives in mind, employees can immediately interpret the answers and insights from the survey and easily translate them into realistic improvement and innovation ideas. While analyzing the survey, you focus almost automatically on the most relevant insights for your organization's customer experience.

But the advantage of outsourcing a study is that an external party's only goal is to improve your customer journey from the customer's perspective, regardless of what internal interests prevail by department, process or employee. An external party researches with an objective and therefore independent view. This way, relevant questions, experiences, leads, or actions come to light that might otherwise remain hidden. In doing so, an external party can serve as a buffer for internal teams with high business dynamics. By engaging in an impartial conversation, you may reach internal agreement sooner on the next steps to optimize the customer experience.

4. Developing knowledge versus getting straight to work

The final advantage of outsourcing customer journey research? The external party can - in most cases - start working for your organization right away. The experts do not need to read up on books, theories, tools or templates, or otherwise gain knowledge about how to approach the research. No, the experts possess the right knowledge and therefore know exactly how to conduct the research and how to translate the insights into concrete improvements to the customer journey. But as an organization it can also be very interesting and valuable to acquire the knowledge about customer journey research yourself. This way, employees develop themselves in this research area and in the future they will be able to conduct another customer journey research faster and with more skill. The knowledge and research results gained are then safeguarded within the organization. Employees will also enter into dialogue with customers themselves, which will not only give them a good picture of the customer experience, but will also enable them to remember these customers for a long time.

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Both scenarios have advantages. It is up to you which advantages weigh the most for your organization, then you can make an informed choice whether to conduct the research yourself or to outsource it to an external party such as Blauw. Have you already made your choice? Please let us know.